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Near-Life

nearlife

Photo by on Christopher Campbell Unsplash Hey Hackers! I’m and I’m the Mike Todd CEO and Founder of . Near-Life First of all, I’d like to say a huge thank you to the community for recognizing as the winner of: HackerNoon us The Top Startup in Bolton Reporter: What does it mean for you to win this title? HackerNoon There’s been huge development and development and change in the Greater Manchester region over the last two decades - but Bolton, specifically, has faced its own set of challenges. This town has a history of creativity and innovation that we’re proud to be part of and we want to play our part in the revitalization of the area. How do you or your company intend to embrace the responsibility of this title in 2022? Continuing to do what we’re doing. We want to push on with the work we’ve started to make a leading player in the world of interactive and immersive content. We stand by our founding ambition to be the first interactive video and VR authoring tool for everyone. Near-Life What are some of the goals you’re looking forward to accomplishing in 2022 (whether it be through company initiatives or your personal journey)? We’re looking to raise investment this year to take us to the next level of our journey. We have already have users all over the world but we want more people to understand who we are and how we can improve the way content is created and shared. We are still only at the foothills of what interactive video and interactive VR can offer. After participating in this journey, is there anything that you would like the team to know? HackerNoon Being an entrepreneur isn’t easy. You’re constantly trying to communicate your belief to others. Not everything is plain sailing. But it is a rewarding struggle to try and create and build something that you feel can make a difference in the world. What is something special about you or your company that you’ve rarely had the chance to properly share but really wanted to? (Give this one a proper think, I’ll know if you didn’t!) We’re very much rooted in the idea of democratising creativity - empowering our users on their own journey of innovation and creativity. We came from a creative content background and were always inspired by the idea that creativity is part of the human condition, something that we all benefit from. We think our interactive authoring tool has the potential to make the world better at communicating. Ambitious, I know. What are some concepts you wish people knew more about? Interactive video and immersive content is still an emergent space. We spend a lot of time trying to share an understanding of the value it can bring. If people already knew more about that, we’d spend less time making the case of the concept - and be able to fast forward to helping explain why our solution is the best and how it can save time, money, effort - and improve results! Is there anything else you’d like me to know? It can be anything. If you, or anyone, is interested to find out more about what we do at Near-Life…you can sign up for a at any time! demo or free trial For more information: Read the FAQs about or . To see all of the winners you may visit , pick any city and view the name that appears at the top. Or follow for posts with the list of names released over the course of the week of February 14, 2022. Startups here here this site this account Thank you to all of our sponsors! We truly appreciate your contribution to the tech world and thus the future! : Startups , , , , , , , , , , Blockster Brex FreeCodeCamp LaunchDarkly Coil Udacity Udemy Vercel Asia Pacific Transgender Network Bybit Everscale Network

Near-Life is Bolton's Top Startup of 2021

Microbial Life on Venus Requires a Unique Life Cycle to Overcome Extreme Conditions

Let's learn about via these 63 free stories. They are ordered by most time reading created on HackerNoon. Visit the to find the most read stories about any technology. Crypto Investing /Learn Repo 1. Investing in Crypto ETFs: A Look At The Pros and Cons Crypto ETFs offer some advantages, but they aren't the right option for every investor. 2. Ukraine's Victory Will Lead To An Interest Rate Reversal and Next Crypto Bull Market Alarm continues to grow around further interest rate hikes and the impact on the global economy. But an interest rate reversal may be closer than once thought 3. Avoiding Crypto Investment Scams: The Most Definitive Guide This is unfortunately what we've seen in the crypto industry, where scammers posing as legitimate crypto companies have defrauded investors out of more than $16 billion since 2012. 4. Brace Yourself: Crypto Is Coming! Headlines say that only one in five Americans own crypto, but the figure is closer to two out of three for wealthy Millennials. 5. Revisiting Making Money in Crypto Making money in crypto using strategies from The Richest Man in Babylon. 6. DeFi Liquidity Providers: Factors Affecting Profitability, Trade-Offs, and Risk-Return Profiles In this article, we break down the factors affecting profitability and explore the trade-offs with different liquidity provision strategies in DeFi. 7. Bitcoin Alternatives: How to Choose the Right Crypto Once your grandparents start asking you what Bitcoin is, you know it’s become pretty popular. And while Bitcoin certainly has plenty of upsides, many people are wondering how they can invest in other cryptocurrencies to get ahead of the curve and possibly become rich. Or at the very least, people are curious as to how they can diversify their financial portfolios with a bit of crypto exposure beyond Bitcoin. And in either case, you have plenty of options to wade through. 8. What Cryptocurrencies Should You Buy For the Longterm More people are showing interest in cryptocurrencies, a constantly growing asset and medium of exchange. As the Kyrrex CEO let me share with you our team`s industry insider opinion on  cryptocurrencies as a worthy investment. 9. Features That Safe DeFi Projects Should Have A quick rundown of what kinds of features and trends need to be considered before a DeFi or crypto project is safe for investing into such as wallet types. 10. Don't Feed the Bear To feed or not feed the bear, that is the question when considering what to do in the turbulent world of cryptocurrency, considering your next move and beyond. 11. Single-Chain vs. Multi-Chain Wallets: About Metamask and its Alternatives MetaMask is losing market share as the crypto wallet competition picks up. We're watching the following emerging wallets: Rabby, Coin98, XDEFI, and Frame. 12. What is Cryptocurrency Burning and Why is There a Need to Burn a Coin? The process by which users remove tokens (also known as coins) from circulation, thereby decreasing the number of coins in use, is known as crypto burning 13. Crypto is a Meme. So is Every Other Investment Our legacy financial system has turned money into a meme. People believe in it because everybody else believes in it. Is that so much different than crypto? 14. Buyer Beware: Avoid the Scams, Honeypots, and Ponzis in Crypto Investing META: Up to 80% of crypto startups end up being scams. Seeking easy returns and trusting promises is a recipe for disaster, but here’s how to become a savvy crypto investor. 15. 3 Best Crypto Lending Platforms: Alternatives to Celsius and Voyager Nexo and CakeDeFi provide crypto lending and earning product which allows users to earn Annual Percentage Yield (APY) by lending their crypto assets. 16. An Intro to Yield Farming: Understanding the Mechanics and Maximizing ROI in the DeFi Ecosystem With the rapidly growing popularity of DeFi, this article dives deep into the mechanics of yield farming and tips on maximizing returns for passive income. 17. What To Watch As Bitcoin Hits Its Lowest Point Since July'21 Coin prices have dropped to an all-time low in a year, and there are now fears that even bigger drops could be seen in the coming days. Here is what to watch. 18. Best Apps for Investing in Crypto Looking to invest in crypto? Whether you’re a seasoned investor or just getting started, we know the best apps for crypto investing and fund management. 19. Enhanced Risk Management Will Help Crypto to Grow Sustainably As institutional investors flood the crypto space, we need advanced risk management tools to help manage their capital. 20. XTRD's Art of Shaving: Improving Execution in Cryptocurrency Markets How to Improve Execution in Crypto Markets or XTRD’s Art of Shaving 21. How To Unblock a Binance Account In this article, we will discuss the main reasons for blocking a Binance account and what to do if this happened. 22. Generation z Becomes Financially Independent - Investment Behavior GenZ place a higher premium on a firm's stated goals. In this article, we’ll discuss how Gen Z investors invest their money and what are their specifics. 23. Investing in NFTs: 7 Lessons Learned Important lessons learned from investing in NFTs and cryptocurrencies. 24. Bill "The Farmer" vs. "Crypto Fools" The old and wise have spoken, crypto as the future of finance is broken! 25. Make it Easy on Me: How to Easily Invest in Crypto Even if You Have No Time Bogle believed that “investing is for everyone.” 26. Trading? Have Fun Staying Poor! Here's How to Get Rich Slowly Instead OSOM Autopilot is a way for everyone, even beginners, to have an algorithmically managed, diversified, long-term-focused portfolio of cryptocurrencies. 27. Is Crypto a Safe-Haven? It is if You're Very Wealthy For a long time, crypto enthusiasts around the world have touted Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a safe haven for investors in times of economic trouble. 28. Fundamental Analysis of ATOM, NEAR, WLKN, A8, MATIC Fundamental analysis of Polygon (MATIC), Ancient8 (A8), Walken (WLKN), NEAR Protocol (NEAR), and COSMOS (ATOM) will help you make the right decision in 2022. 29. 4 BEST Crypto Coins To Invest In 2022 The crypto market has had a rough few months as of late, but now, there are a lot of indications that the market may see a sharp rise very soon in 2022 30. How I Doubled My Deposit Using the WOWswap Protocol Many of my friends lost a huge amount of money. Especially those who were heavily subscribed to Terra ecosystem feel sorry. 31. Who Will Die and Who Will Thrive in the Upcoming Crypto Ice Age A look into the future of decentralization from the perspective of good 'ol open-source collaboration. 32. What the LUNA Crash Means For The Crypto Market In case you missed it, LUNA used to be one of the biggest cryptocurrencies on the planet, but now, it’s absolutely worthless. 33. 12 Statistics About the State of Staking in 2022 Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus is opening the doors to crypto investors looking to increase their profits. With PoS, they no longer need to have the best hardware and expend massive amounts of energy to compete against other miners to be the fastest to validate a block. With PoS, investors can simply stake some of their crypto for the chance to be chosen to validate a block and gain returns for doing so. 34. The Bitcoin Bull Run Timeline As cryptocurrencies continue to soar to new heights, investors should remember the costs of mining. 35. Thank You, Bitcoin Traders, for Making Us Rich Without traders, crypto markets would fall apart. 36. 7 Common Crypto Investing Mistakes (and How To Avoid Them) How to avoid the most common mistakes people make when they invest in cryptocurrencies. Quick guide for crypto and investment beginners. 37. Why Polygon (MATIC) Is A Good Cryptocurrency Investment Why, thanks to its infrastructure and design, Polygon(MATIC) is a great cryptocurrency to invest in and why even experienced traders should consider it. 38. What Centralized Exchanges Tell Us About Crypto Investors When comes to trading, centralized exchange rule the crypto market. Based on some of the work we have done at IntoTheBlock, we believe around 40% of the daily volume in major cryptocurrencies is processed through centralized exchanges. Sadly, centralized exchanges are also one of the most difficult components to analyze in the crypto space and a regular source of poor/fake data. 39. As More Employers Offer Crypto Salaries, Should You Take Them up on It? Cryptocurrencies are gaining widespread acceptance at an amazing pace. 40. When Will We See Bitcoin's Top? based upon only two data points (we can also look at 2011’s high, which was 30%), my feeling is price will top out when this statistic is near 47-48% 41. How to Avoid NFT Scams and Rug Pulls: 6 Red Flags to Avoid in 2022 Learn how to avoid NFT scams & rug pulls with these 6 vastly common red flags in NFT projects that even seasoned investors fall for 42. My Predictions for Blockchain and Cryptocurrency in 2022 In 2021 people were letting go of their fixed assets and liquifying them into modern investments: cryptocurrency. 43. Cryptocurrency Market Suffers Major Losses: Over $70 Billion Wiped Off in 24 Hours In conclusion, the volatile nature of the cryptocurrency market can cause sudden drops and losses, as seen with the recent over $70 billion wipeout. 44. Crypto Exit Scams Have Stolen Billions — Here Are 6 Things to Watch Out For Now that the industry is growing, with more widespread understanding and adoption, there are a few simple things that will help weed out bad actors. 45. Ethereum Valuation Using the Edosophia Macro Model True value derives from the usefulness of an invention to solve a problem. Similarly, Ethereum derives its value from scarcity and its ability to problem-solve. 46. Crypto & the Whale: When Retail Investors Make Fish Food What does everyone think about whales in the crypto ecosystem? They seem to have diametrically opposed interests to the everyday small investor. 47. What Makes a Token Flexible? Volatility drift takes place when rebalancing and can be thought of as locking in prices at that point in time. 48. The 8 Factors That Influence the Price of Bitcoin Downwards That You Should Know About The 8 Factors That Influence the Price of Bitcoin Downwards That You Should Know About. An important reminder. 49. 3 'Animal' Farming Projects to Follow for a Fruitful Harvest in 2022 Let’s look briefly at 3 interesting farming projects providing convenient interfaces and profitable conditions for farming. 50. Long-Term Health of the Crypto Industry Needed This Culling Either way, this was needed to wash out some of the nonsense in our space. 51. The Emergence of Crypto Visa in 2023 In this era of a radical transformation of traditional finance, it seems to be natural development that credit and debit cards are the next set of products 52. What'll Happen to Crypto After Black Monday 2020? Bitcoin was explicitly called “digital gold” back in 2011, and a 2010 InfoWorld article says: 53. How to Find your Approach to Crypto Investing 3 steps to develop your strategy to crypto investing. Find a strategic direction for bitcoin and ethereum investment & decide between HODLing and trading. 54. What are the Risks of Owning FLI Tokens? Investors should know these four performance and technical risks inherent in flexible leverage index products. Read to know. 55. 5 Crypto Launchpads Not to Skip in Q3 2022 Crypto isn’t going anywhere and so is the case with crypto launchpads. Why is it that launchpads offer that developers find valuable? Launchpads offer a variety of projects, tools, and resources that help developers take the project from the ground. 56. 12 Eye-Opening Quotes By Investing Legends That Will Change Your View on Volatility Bitcoin slumped over 50% from its all-time high.
While these drawdowns are always painful, they are nothing out of the ordinary. 57. ZK-Rollups: 3 Cryptocurrencies to Explode in 2022 & 2023? We'll look at K-Rollups, plus three cryptocurrencies which use ZK-Rollup technology with a bonus cryptocurrency which is related to one of the platforms. 58. The Best Robo Advisors for 2021 The Best Robo-advisors make investing easy, even automatic. If you’re a set-it-and-forget-it type person, you’ll love how robo-advisors make investing easy. 59. Meet the SpaceXpanse Multiverse The biggest problem with the metaverse currently is the lack of technology and infrastructure to support a seamless and cohesive virtual world experience. 60. Mission: Earn 1 BTC and 1 ETH in One year. How I Did It. This is own life story of how I managed to accumulate a Bitcoin without any financial investment. 61. Introducing Crypto Leagues: Your Path to No More Rekt! Have you ever suffered some kind of loss in the crypto space while trading, I mean that kind of loss that makes you clip both hands and tightly resting them on your head? 62. The Ultimate Guide to Hedging Strategies for Cryptocurrency Hedging strategies enable traders to use more than one concurrent bet in opposite directions to minimize the risk of drastic losses. 63. Will 2022 be the Year of the Bear and Other Crypto Investment Themes for the Year Downmarket got you down and concerned about the future of #blockchain Read our TL;DR summary of Messari and Ryan Selkis' Crypto Theses for 2022. Thank you for checking out the 63 most read stories about Crypto Investing on HackerNoon. to find the most read stories about any technology. Visit the /Learn Repo

63 Stories To Learn About Crypto Investing

The Jungle: Chapter XXX

Do you remember ? If you grew up in the eighties and spent any time around arcade games, there’s a good chance you will. Its most recent high profile name-check was in Stranger Things: a nod to its enduring pop-culture legacy. And there’s talk of a film in the works. Dragon’s Lair I remember it particularly well. Near my home on the outskirts of Manchester, England, one of our local stores had a handful of arcade games you could play and Dragon’s Lair just stood out. It was so unique. I would’ve never dreamed it at the time but over three decades later, I can draw a line from those childhood days, through experiences with the United Nations, international humanitarian response and film and television – to what we do at Near-Life™ today. Check out our Dragon’s Lair interactive scenario created using Near-Life™ CREATOR. Interactive video and games Back in the 80s Dragon’s Lair was credited with re-invigorating an ailing arcade industry: on the backfoot since the rise of consoles. Its innovation was to combine the animated storytelling of Don Bluth with interactive gameplay. It worked through the – if you made your move at the right time, you would skip to the correct outcome. The game was one of the earliest – and most famous – examples of a genre that is now known as Full Motion Video or FMV. use of laserdisc technology FMV games combine the art of film with the interactivity of games. In their most common form, they tend to link video sequences using a ‘choose your own adventure’ style approach to decision making. The choices you make affect how the story unfolds, as with the books of the same name. However, it wasn’t just high-profile, blockbuster games and consoles that defined the nascent 80s tech scene – there was also the parallel DIY aesthetic of home computing and the world of bedroom-coding upstarts. PC mags were filled with code to build your own games and people like Matthew Smith and Tim and Chris Stamper, in the UK at least, became punk-programming icons. The spirit of the possible Indeed, in the you-can-do-it-too spirit, many early ‘home computer’ games for the likes of the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 often had some fairly rudimentary authoring feature that allowed you to create your own games – no BASIC required! That democratic spirit always resonated with me – technology empowering us to unlock our own creativity. Many of us enjoy consuming culture, while also being inspired to roll our sleeves up and have a go – as the exponential rise of YouTube and now TikTok has proved beyond any doubt. Interactive video and humanitarian response Fast forward twenty years and I had just returned from working with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo. My role had been part of the international effort to support economic redevelopment following the war there. Back in the UK, thanks to my experience, I was invited to become part of the Government’s ‘Stabilisation Unit’. They put together a list of ‘experts’ (a description that was tenuous at best in my case) who could be deployed at short notice to support the UK’s international aid efforts. In order to be sent ‘on mission’, you had to first complete a very comprehensive form of security training, commonly known as ‘Hostile Environment Awareness Training’ or HEAT: originally designed for journalists going out to war zones. The course I was part of was a week-long exercise that involved highly immersive simulations: featuring everything from landmine explosions to hostage and kidnapping situations. It all took place at an army base and was very, very thorough. However, what struck me about the whole process was just how expensive it must be – and how difficult it would be to give large numbers of people access to the same experience. One of the common challenges in the development sector as a whole is that so-called ‘international’ staff often get access to much better and more complete training than those employed in-country. It was this that got me thinking. The inception of Near-Life™: the interactive video authoring tool for everyone Since my return to the UK, despite retaining a connection with the international development world, my main focus had been media production, specifically, documentaries: an art form that was undergoing its own democratisation of creativity. Video content, thanks to the rise of digital and the likes of Final Cut Pro, had become much easier to produce. In documentaries, at least the projects we focussed on, the emphasis is very much on realism and telling authentic stories. I wondered: could you combine something authentic and realistic with a game-like (FMV) simulation to provide learners with the type of experience I’d had on my HEAT Course? That, in essence, was the inception of Near-Life™. A small group of us, who still work together today, set to work to prove it was possible. You could hardly call it an overnight success. Getting mission ready It took us around five years of pitching the idea to various agencies and funders until we finally secured the support of the UK’s Department for International Development and the United States Aid Department. We received investment to produce a project on ‘Field Security Management’ with UK-based Humanitarian NGO RedR. Filmed entirely in Kenya, the project, called ‘ ’, was launched in 2015 – and we received resoundingly positive feedback from learners. We were even invited to present Mission Ready at the UN World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul to showcase the innovation. Mission Ready A worldwide success Not only did learners prefer the approach, it also improved outcomes. This is something that all the research shows – interactions and game-like experiences enhance knowledge retention. And, importantly for us, the course, translated to French, Spanish and Arabic, was picked up around the world – making this type of immersive learning accessible to a much wider range of people than would otherwise have been possible. Even now, some five years later, Mission Ready has hundreds of users in over 30+ countries. We pushed on from Mission Ready by teaming up with the Norwegian Refugee Council to produce an award-winning project called ‘Frontline Humanitarian Toolbox’. Filmed in Jordan, with an Arabic-speaking cast and based on real-life experiences, the interactive video course was designed to give locally employed colleagues in Syria access to high-quality experiential training that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible. We’re very proud of this work in the international humanitarian space – and it’s an area we continue to be involved with, most recently collaborating with the World Health Organisation on a project for Emergency Medical Teams. Gamification in learning has many use cases However, we always knew the approach was applicable in multiple areas. We spread our wings to produce further pilots, partnering on learning design and content, with the likes of UK retailer ASDA and the National Health Service, as well as First Aid charity St John Ambulance and international property company Jones Lang Lasalle. It was these very disparate use cases – and the positive reaction they had – that inspired us to take the step we’d always wanted. We raised investment to develop an authoring tool that would empower others, in the true DIY spirit, to design and publish their own immersive projects. We launched in Spring 2020 and have since onboarded users from across the world. Thanks to investment from Innovate UK we were also able to add VR authoring at the beginning of 2021 – giving even greater flexibility to content creators. And its use of Web VR technology means the typical barriers to scaling VR projects simply aren’t there. Near-Life™ CREATOR Interest in interactive video continued to grow Since we started on this journey some ten-plus years ago, we’ve seen interest continue to grow in the interactive and immersive learning space. The term ‘branching scenarios’ is now common parlance in learning. More and more people are aware of the value this approach can bring. And the likes of Netflix’s Bandersnatch and Bear Gryll’s ‘You vs Wild’ have been more recent landmarks in the FVM crossover world. Bringing interactivity to a previously linear space. The creative possibilities really are huge. That’s where we come in. We want to unlock those possibilities for a new generation of content creation. The focus for us has always been around empowerment: from empowering learners with more immersive experiences, through to empowering creators to take their own projects to the next level. Edtech at the core Certainly interest in remote learning – and all things remote – has accelerated through the pandemic. And we continue to see learning as a core part of what we do. But we have also seen, thanks to the likes of Netflix, Steam and others, an increased interest in interactive and immersive storytelling more broadly. We now have users creating everything from public information campaigns through to interactive children’s theatre. Democratising interactive video and content creation Our goal is simple: to make interactive content creation accessible. We’re proud of developing the first interactive Video and VR authoring tool designed for everyone. And we continue to work on enhancing the game design capabilities that are at the core of what we do. We want interactive content to be easy, removing the technical barriers that may previously have held people back. The future looks bright for this immersive, creative world. And as more people choose their own adventure, I’m convinced the best is yet to come. If you want to learn more about creating your own interactive video, VR and gamified content, of our authoring tool. click here to request a demo Also published on: https://near-life.tech/interactive-video-a-near-life-story/ This article is part of The hosted by HackerNoon in partnership with Gaming Metaverse Writing Contest The Sandbox . Submit your today for your chance to win up to $2000. #gaming-metaverse story

Interactive Video: Past, Present, and Future

Why We Blow Shit Up One of my BFFs and I were talking recently about decision making. Specifically he and I were discussing the concept of whether 3 or 4 good decisions (in addition to luck, privilege etc.) was all that separated us from those in say prison or found themselves homeless. I have a number of people I grew up with, who went to the same school, had similar family life, same socioeconomic background but made a few different decisions that took their lives down a very different path. The older I get the more I realise that skill of making good decisions, is in my view a superior trait, even to talent. In an effort to improve my own decision making capacity, one of my recent interests has been cognitive bias — specifically how to be more aware of it and how to counter it and it’s actually really, really, hard. It’s just so pervasive, and stealth like, its hard to recognise you are acting directly on its behalf. I like to consider myself a generally rational person, yet have made plenty irrational decisions in my life because I was swayed by emotion or a predisposition to a certain train of thought or pre-existing biases I was unaware of. Ive written before how I underestimate men because of my cognitive biases, I’ve also made character judgements of people based on my own biases only to later find, once I set aside my biases or got to know them well enough to see my biases, that they are actually good people. Or actually really bad people. I have eleventy billion examples, I could, quite literally go on and on. past Yet, as a former scientist and now an investor, I’m always trying to hone my ability to make decisions on objective data, rather than on biases, which are not just cognitive by the way, but emotional too. Nobel laureate Herbert Simon wrote, “In order to have anything like a complete theory of human rationality, we have to understand what role emotion plays in it,” in his 1983 book . Reason In Human Affairs And in investing, I see of emotional and cognitive bias that leads to irrational decision making. In the last month, I’ve seen a founder and material equity holder make a decision to plunge a company into administration rather than complete a financing at signature stage. I’ve seen investors continue to fund a venture that is not viable, due to anecdotal market analysis. I’ve seen co-founders blow up a near life-long working relationship and friendship out of hurt. I’ve seen investors blow up a relationship with a good founder and co-investors out of ego. None of these were rational decisions — blowing up a Company (and their equity holding) which otherwise would be viable is not rational. Financing a Company on anecdotal, n=1 data, rather than market data is not rational. Ending a decades long professional and personal relationship due to a disagreement is understandable, but it’s not rational. It’s all rather self-destructive actually, but yet it happens. plenty But is in fact, perhaps just incredibly human. There is a theory that irrational decision making, that is decision swayed by cognitive or emotional biases has evolved to first, make decisions on limited data which for 99.9% of history has been the case, and second, to lead to multiple permutations and combinations of outcomes that will eventually lead to higher evolution. To put it blunt, it’s Darwinian. But what if this leads to self –destruction, where the hell does that fit into this neat little evolutionary theory? Well, I have a view and it comes from my biochemistry days and my tendency to think in systems. Apoptosis. Apoptosis is the process whereby cells in our body, which get old or become compromised through too many genetic mutations (a natural process) to make them viable, activate a self-destruct mechanism to clear them out. When everything is hunky dory, this ‘self cleaning’ mechanism keeps our bodies running more or less to plan. When certain mutations are acquired in this self destruct mechanism or override it in the cell, that’s when we get cancer. And I think irrational decision making which leads to destruction rather than construction, is rather like professional (or personal) apoptosis. Perhaps, these irrational, emotionally or cognitively biased decisions, are a professional Darwinian mechanism for weeding out the unhealthy actors, or unhealthy dynamics, before they turn into cancer. The founder above will blow up the Company, but then he won’t be in a position to do any more harm in this sector because he will be considered radioactive. The co-founders ending their professional and personal relationship will stop lingering resentment leading to more value destruction from within. So, with this in mind and applying this lense to myself, how do I make sure don’t turn activate a self destruct mechanism and commit professional apoptosis, or worse yet turn into a cancer? I am responsible for too many people’s money and too many peoples jobs which rely on me making good, rational decisions limited as much as humanely possible by my emotional and cognitive bias. I would love some cognitive bias training (suggestions appreciated!), but I also think this is like a mere baby step towards the real goal. If I really want to prevent myself blowing shit up, I also need to work on keeping emotional bias in check too. Easier said than done. Stay tuned. I

This Company Will Self Destruct in Five, Four, Three……

Co-Designing Complex Systems

Source: Pixabay Traditional backups were created and stored on local data centers managed by the enterprises themselves. However, managing data centers is expensive and prone to various issues. Therefore, there is a shift in the market towards cloud backup solutions. Cloud backups are reliable, fast, and flexible. Enterprises can backup VMs, application data, archives all on a cloud backup solution of their choice. Instead of throwing money at the problem, enterprises can leave expensive data centers behind and embrace this new paradigm. Cloud backups eliminate the looming threat of data loss in case of a disaster. Stored across multiple data centers, cloud backups can be accessed and managed from any authorized remote device. Source: Pixabay The cloud market has had a bustling last few years with several vendors coming up with innovative cloud solutions. However, the front-runners of this race are Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft’s Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Together, these three vendors account for around 90% of the market space. Let’s look at what these vendors have to offer: Amazon Web Services: Launched in 2006, AWS is one of the oldest cloud offerings in the market. And, with the innovation Amazon puts into AWS, they have managed to lead the cloud market. AWS accounts for as much as 60% of the cloud market at the moment, depending on which survey you look at. With almost 160+ services, AWS has the largest portfolio of services offered. Over the years, Amazon has gained a great reputation in the market and continue to deliver to the day. AWS cloud services include development and management tools and mobile and application services. AWS Cloud backup AWS cloud backup solution is a package of different storage services based on different needs of enterprises. These solutions all provide a central configuration that can be accessed through authorized devices. AWS also allows for more prioritized and completely automated backups which reduce manual work to a bare minimum. The various storages services provided by Amazon include: Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service): This storage service is object-based and allows users to choose what global data center they want to choose based on geographical distance making data transfer easier. Amazon Glacier: This storage service is ideal for backups that aren’t accessed very often or at all,  This service is cheaper since this storage doesn’t have to be very active. Glacier also allows for swifter data retrieval from huge loads of data. Amazon EBS: Amazon Elastic Block Storage is ideal for more persistent data loads like the once maintained by Amazon Cloud Compute (EC2). EBS keeps data available even when it’s not being used by any EC2 components. Storage Gateway: Storage Gateway is a hybrid platform that allows on-prem resources to connect to the cloud. AWS is a pay-as-you-go service that provides users with various discounts based on their usage. Although, it is probably the most expensive service on the list. Users can choose to terminate their services at any time as there is no long term licensing. There’s a free tier available with limited services and storage capacity for users who want to try it out. Source: Pixabay Microsoft Azure Right behind AWS in the race is Microsoft's cloud solution, Azure. Since its launch in 2010, it has gained a lot of traction and momentum. It captures 20% of the cloud market and has been implemented by various enterprises all around the work thanks to perpetual innovation and the trust Microsoft has gained among the enterprises. Azure is an amazing service that provides a variety of tools and services to its clients. With the help of Azure, users can deploy and manage VMs on the scale. Azure also provides support for the hybrid cloud which AWS falls short on. Microsoft is regarded as one of the fastest cloud providers in the market and allows users to perform large scale, parallel batch computations which makes it ideal for enterprises with giant workloads. Azure’s backup solutions: Azure provides users with a reliable and quick backup solution. can be used to backup on-premise VMs, Azure VMs, files, and heavy SQL workloads without any additional infrastructure. Azure backup allows users to encrypt and store their data for an extended period of time. Azure backups are also application-consistent which reduces time to recovery. Like AWS, Azure also provides a centralized backup management portal. Let’s take a look at various storage options provided by Azure: Azure backup Blob Storage This is Azure’s object storage solution. It is optimized for storing huge volumes of unstructured data. Blob storage is ideal for writing on to log files and streaming videos and audio. Azure Disk Storage Azure provides users with both HDD and SDD disk storage options for VM instances. Users can choose one and pick the size they want and Azure takes care of creating and managing that disk later. As the requirements evolve, users can easily upgrade to SDD. Azure Long Term Storage Azure also provides users with cost-effective long term storage options: : Meant for frequently accessed data. Hot : Meant for data that isn’t accessed frequently and it stored for at least 30 days. Cool : Meant for data stored for at least 180 days and accessed rarely. Archive : StorSimple This hybrid cloud storage solution helps users consolidate their data from different platforms. It also provides accelerated disaster recovery and improved compliance. Azure is cheaper than AWS and provides its services on-demand which makes for much-relaxed billing. There’s also a free tier that provides limited credits for a month. Google Cloud Platform Google Cloud Platform has been in the race since 2019. GCP offers a number of services like the other two vendors. GCP captures 12% of the cloud market, today. Several enterprises rely on GCP for their entire workloads. GCP’s App Engine helps with the development of applications without requiring a server. It also provides high-level computation and storage services. GCP is one of the fastest-growing cloud vendors in the market. Enterprises rely on GCP because of its incredible security solutions. GCP provides enterprises a higher level of security via multilayer authorization and data encryption and is hence ideal for enterprises that put security first. Google Cloud backup solutions: Google Cloud Platform doesn’t have an official backup solution, however, it does provide efficient storage options that can be used to store and maintain backups. GCP provides support for relational databases and Hadoop clusters along with Big Query and Big Table among numerous others. Let’s take a look at GCP’s cloud storage portfolio: Google Cloud Storage GCP’s object storage offering provides high availability and durability. It’s ideal for backups and archival data. Google Persistent Disk This is GCP’s high-performance storage solution for VM instances. Persistent Disk allows multi-reader mounting which lets multiple users read data from the single disk without any effect on its performance. Persistent Disk is highly scalable and allows for more efficient snapshot creation. Snapshots are created in a matter of minutes and get replicated across all regions to make it easy to restore if need be. Archival Cloud Storage For long-term archive storage, GCP offers low cost, durable, and highly available storage solutions. : This option is ideal for data that is not accessed a lot or at all with the ideal frequency being once a year. Coldline : This option is suitable for data that is accessed a little more frequently, say, ideally once every month. Nearline GCP also provides its services on demand and users may opt for one of the various cost-effective packs they offer. Doesn’t have it’s own hybrid support service, however, relies on partners like Egnyte. In conclusion These are just some of the various vendors available in the market. Organizations looking to backup their workloads should consider all the different features and prices and overall reputation of a vendor to finally choose one that works for them.

Evaluating Cloud Backup Solutions: AWS vs. Azure vs. Google Cloud

To improve data sorting for push notifications, Alibaba’s Xianyu team reworked its approach to database structure, enabling its service to better target user populations. As Alibaba’s second-hand trading platform Xianyu(闲鱼) has grown and developed, the amount of data it has to sort through has risen astronomically. With hundreds of millions of users, each with over one hundred dimensions for data indicators, user data presents a technological challenge for Alibaba: How can you quickly screen for a targeted population to carry out targeted customer operations using push notifications? Pushing is the quickest way for Xianyu to get information to users. The most common pushing method for Xianyu is to first calculate the push population offline, prepare the corresponding push message, and then push messages at a specified time on the next day. Generally, pushing is a periodic task. However, for pushing tasks that need to be sent immediately, BI personnel must manually intervene. Each push task occupies half of a day on average for BI personnel to develop, and the operation can be troublesome due to the difficulty of identifying user populations to push to from the user data. Many existing solutions in the industry take minutes or even hours to generate query results when handling large amounts of data. This article explores Xianyu’s solution for high-efficiency data screening, statistics and analysis in big data scenarios, enabling its BI personnel to use any combination of query conditions to screen data that can be used to form pushing strategies within milliseconds. Identifying the Solution Looking at the challenges its platform faces, the Xianyu team realized that sorting data related to pushing is a typical OLAP scenario. A simple comparison of OLTP and OLAP is as follows: Specifically, it involves querying large databases with millions, or even billions, of rows of data, for which the high read/write concurrency or the transaction support of OLTP is unnecessary. Based on this conclusion, the team further realized that a column storage database presented the best approach — specifically, Alibaba Cloud’s HybridDB for MySQL. Columns beat rows Row storage databases commonly used for OLTP such as MySQL and Oracle are poor solutions for Xianyu’s needs. Row storage is suitable for nearline data analysis, for example, in scenarios that require querying all the fields of a certain number of eligible records in the table. It does not scale well if you have a large number of rows and only need to query a small number of fields. A simple comparison of the characteristics of row storage and columnar storage is as follows: For example, consider a scenario where you have a table with 20 fields and you need to calculate the average user’s age. If the table uses row storage, the database needs to scan the whole table and traverse all the rows. A separate index or composite index can mitigate this, but only for commonly used conditional queries. As soon as you need to query a non-indexed field, the database needs to scan the entire table. When you have hundreds of millions of rows, scanning the whole table can take a significant amount of time. Columnar storage is much better in this scenario. The database only needs to locate the age column, scan the data from this column to get all the ages, and then calculate the average value. Theoretically, the performance is 20 times faster than row storage since you only need to read one column of data. Which columnar storage is best? Xianyu comprehensively reviewed Alibaba Group’s various columnar storage DB products (ADS/PostgreSQL/HBase/HybridDB), and evaluated their respective read/write performance, stability, syntax comprehensiveness, and development and deployment costs. The most commonly used columnar storage database is HBase. However, its design makes it unsuitable for Xianyu’s requirements. It uses a rowkey as the core part of its design. Common filtering conditions are combined and integrated into the rowkey, and queries are done through the Rowkey’s get (single record) or scan (range) functions. It is designed for unstructured data that has a limited number of filtering conditions. For Xianyu, since all fields need to be used as filtering conditions, structured storage is still needed, and low latency is required for queries. Of the remaining solutions offered by the Alibaba Group, HybridDB for MySQL made the best choice. For Xianyu, HybridDB for MySQL provides the following features that allow to it provide millisecond response times to multi-dimensional queries in big data scenarios: · A high-performance columnar storage engine and its predicate computing capabilities with built-in storage, which can use a variety of statistical information to quickly skip data blocks for fast screening. · Smart indexing technology, which automatically creates indexes for a table and can combine multiple predicate conditions based on the indexes for screening. (Xianyu does not need to build its own indexes.) · A high-performance MPP+DAG fused computing engine that combines high-concurrency and high-throughput modes to achieve high-performance vector computing, this allows the computational engine and storage to work closely together to speed up computation. · Support for a variety of data modeling techniques such as star modeling, snowflake modeling, and aggregation sorting. Business moderate data modeling enables better performance indicators. In addition to performance, Hybrid DB for MySQL was also ideal for Xianyu because MySQL and BI are compatible with each other with complete SQL support. Further, it included support for spatial search, full-text search, and complex data types (multi-value columns and JSON). Pushing on HybridDB Xianyu implemented HybridDB for MySQL for its population selection system, and integrated the population selection system with its original Push system. This greatly improved the preparation data and transmission efficiency of pushing and freed up development resources. HybridDB for MySQL not only provides strong underlying support for Xianyu’s targeted user operations, but can also be applied to other business scenarios, such as targeted pushing of home page pictures and other scenarios that require hierarchical user operations, thus increasing the optimization space for the Xianyu service. System architecture In the following image you can see the three-layer system architecture used by Xianyu for its population selection system used with Push, consisting of an offline data layer, a real-time computing layer (HybridDB), and an application system. In the , user dimension data is distributed in the offline tables for each business system. The offline T+1 timing task is used to aggregate and import the data into the user wide table at the real-time computing layer. offline data layer The , according to the screening conditions of the population, will query the eligible number of users and list of user IDs from the user wide table to provide services to the application system. real-time computing layer The forms the first part of the application system layer, and provides a visual interface for operational personnel to select and save screening conditions as a population for analysis or pushing. Each population corresponds to a SQL store, which resembles: population selection front-end system select count(*) from user_big_table where column1> 1 and column2 in (‘a’,’b’) and (column31=1 or column32=2) SQL supports multiple layers and/or nested combinations of any fields for querying. With SQL saving a population, when the data in the user table changes, running SQL can retrieve the latest users in the population and update it accordingly. _Xianyu’s PUSH syste_m forms the second part of the application system layer. It obtains the corresponding “where” condition of the population from the population selection front-end system, obtains the user list in a paging manner from the real-time computing layer, and pushes messages to the user. During its implementation process, the performance of paging queries was a key focus. Optimizing paging performance When paging, if the size of the population is large (> 10 million), the query performance significantly reduces as the number of queried pages increases. To improve performance, row numbers were added to the population data and they were exported to MySQL. The following table shows that structure. Each time the population is exported, a new batch number is added, and is time stamped and incremented. The row number automatically increments from 1 for each batch number. The structure uses a composite index made up of “Population ID” + “Batch No.” + “Row No.”. This allows the PUSH system to use an index query to replace paging and improve the efficiency and performance of querying large-number pages. HybridDB’s powerful data export capability more than compensates for the extra cost of exporting data, with millions of data points taking only seconds to export. Looking to The Future Xianyu’s model ensures that the results of combined queries are returned within seconds from massive multi-dimensional data stores. As a generic technology implementation solution in OLAP scenarios, this technique can be used to transform other original service systems to improve service results and as a reference for similar scenarios. User data in the population selection engine is currently imported at T+1. The reason is that population-related indicators do not change frequently, and many indicators (such as user tags) are computed offline at T+1, such that the data update frequency of T+1 is acceptable. Later on, a more powerful commodity selection engine based on HybridDB was built. Xianyu commodity data changes faster than user data. On the one hand, users update their own merchandise at any time they wish. On the other hand, due to Xianyu’s single-stock feature (such that goods are removed from their shelves as soon as they are sold) and various other reasons, the statuses of goods can change at any time. Therefore, our selection engine should be able to recognize these changes in data as soon as possible and make real-time adjustments at the delivery layer. Based on HybridDB (storage) and real-time computing engines, the Xianyu team has recently built a more powerful real-time selection system called Mach, which readers can look forward to exploring in future articles covering developments at Xianyu. Alibaba Tech First hand and in-depth information about Alibaba’s latest technology → Facebook: . Twitter: . “Alibaba Tech” “AlibabaTech”

A Push in the Right Direction: Improving Notification Targeting

Note: This is the second post of the series Data Tagging in Medical Imaging. You can find the first post here . In the previous post of the series, Data Tagging in Medical Imaging, we gave you an overview of the kind of processes that you must put in practice to scale your data tagging engine. In this blog we will thoroughly discuss how to come up with these processes and things to consider before finalizing and formulating these processes. We will be discussing what these processes are and how they affect the data tagging process. First of all, you need some resources to set up these processes. To set up them up, you need to make sure the availability of the following: A team of medical professionals that can annotate the data Data annotation software where the medical professionals will annotate the data And obviously…DATA! So, let’s deep dive into these processes; what are they and what is their importance and role in efficient data tagging. We have listed down three main processes. Ideally, this is all one large workflow process designed to help you annotate your medical dataset in a faster, scalable and accurate way. Data Flow Quality Assurance/Quality Control Providing the data to the data scientists Let’s discuss these aforementioned processes in details below: Data Flow It is really critical to define how the data will flow through all the stakeholders at different stages. As data requirements for building a real-world AI solution is huge, you need to know where will be storing terabytes of data. You can either store it on the cloud using a number of cold storage such as Google Coldline, Google Nearline and Amazon Glacier etc. or choose to store it locally — Other factors should be considered as well while deciding your storage facility such as the quantity of data you are storing and how many times will you retrieve the data from your storage etc. Noticeably, cold storage is used to store inactive data and hence, they are extremely cost-effective. But the data retrieval is costlier with cold storage platforms. So, it is advised to keep some amount of training data locally, using devices such as NAS(Network Attached Storage), which makes retrieval of a small amount of data easier. Data Storage: however, until you have a strong scalable local infrastructure with perfect power backup, we recommend that you use cloud for all the data flow. Cloud just gives you a lot of flexibility — and the storage is not that costly. Medical professionals annotate the data that is served to them. This data is served within the data annotation software developed by your software development team. All the medical professionals who are going to annotate the data should have proper login credentials for better visibility and progress tracking. There are many caveats to consider while serving the data to the medical professionals based on their experience. In our data tagging engine, a senior radiologist will have different privileges than a junior radiologist, based on the roles defined. Similarly, you also have to ensure that all stakeholders see the information they need to see within the software. For example, non-personal information on the subject such as age bracket, gender, morbidity like diabetes etc. This supplies additional information to the medical professionals. Thus, allowing them to annotate accurately. Serving the Data: Quality Assurance/Quality Control This is perhaps the most important process in your workflow. The entire purpose of this exercise is to create a dataset that could be used to train the machines. The models that you create are only as accurate as the training dataset. Following are the things that you could do to create a strong QA/QC layer in your workflow. **Verification of annotations:**Each and every tag needs to be thoroughly verified by a medical professional with a different privilege level. This double verification ensures a lesser error rate in the annotated dataset. It is essential to continuously monitor the performance of the medical professionals and subsequently provide them the feedback. It could happen that some medical professionals are very good at annotating NCCT Head but not MRI Head. These things need to be learned and then be acted upon accordingly. Feedback to medical professionals: Providing annotated data to the Data Scientists: This is final layer — and there is a lot of scope for miscommunication in this layer. The entire purpose of annotating all the medical data is to provide it to the Data Science team for them to build the model. The Data Science team is always running a number of experiments for which they need a varied amount of data. In between all the experiments, it is very easy for the Data Scientists to be lost with a stream of annotated data coming from the Tagging Engine. This makes maintenance of data flow logs really important. In this blog, we discussed the initial requirements of setting up a scalable tagging engine and core processes involved. Processes such as Data flow, QA/QC and training of medical professionals is critical in deploying a smart tagging engine. In achieving this, the proper formulation of the aforementioned processes is critical. In the next blog of this series, we will discuss the most important aspect of the data tagging capabilities, Quality Control. You can find the first blog of the series . Please watch this space for more. here , is a Deep Learning powered web service by , that can comprehend a huge amount of unstructured text and visual content to empower your products. You can check out some of our and reach out to us by filling this form or write to us at apis@paralleldots.com. ParallelDots AI APIs ParallelDots Inc text analysis APIs here

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